YouTube Getting Ready to Ban Gun Videos?

YouTube has changed its “Advertiser-Friendly Content Guidelines.” Again. The latest legal verbiage disqualifies payment for videos that present a “controversial or sensitive subject and event, including subject related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.”

The main concern is that YouTube has now created such a broad and subjective definition of what is prohibited that no one will ever be able to confidently create a video without fear that it will someday be flagged and then de-monetized… and that’s for channels that have nothing to do with guns. You can imagine the discussions going on with gun channels right now as we can see the writing on the wall more clearly than ever before.

As Herr Twang und Bang points out, full30.com is already offering a suitable alternative. GetZone.com is also well worth a visit. If YouTube pulls the plug on gun videos and channels look for these and others to take off. Even more.

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I am relatively confident that google understands money enough to know that literally throwing out millions of page views would be bad for business. AFAICT, google loves money more than they hate guns.

But individuals working for and acting on Google’s behalf are probably more concerned about getting rid of the “evil ______” (fill in the blank; in this case, gun-related stuff). These individual are FAR less likely to act in accordance with Google’s long-term interests in this area, unless and until a failure to do so will directly impact them in a seriously negative manner, and this direct impact becomes widely known in the ranks (pre-screwup).

Perhaps. But the very wealthy care more about the libido dominandi than money they already have. Their ultimate lust is for social engineering in the name of progressivism. They won’t rest until the resistance is machine gunned in ditches.

Google is silently conditioning us to their will. Google hillary clinton crim, then bing hillary clinton crim. There are a bunch of other examples. Try Open Society Institute Revolutions on Google and Bing (I’ll bet the Google founders have direct contact with Soros).

In short, google is fighting a long term culture war against guns and individual rights in general. The writing is on the wall.

They seem to be taking a short term payoff with long term negative repercussions. They aren’t “demonitizing” videos, just refusing to pay content providers for ad revenue. You will still see ads on these channels, google now just pockets 100% of the revenue without paying the creator of the video.

It is a lot like showing up to work and being told by your boss that not only will you not be paid that day, but you still have to work free of charge.

In the long run, this will have a positive effect as competitors begin to spring up to take in the dissatisfied content providers. I have a feeling that whom ever at Google came up with this idea is going to be unemployed within 6 months after people start jumping ship and their bottom line starts dropping.

I am relatively certain google has colluded with politians to bury search results and is arrogant or short-sighted enough to think there would be few, if any repercussions. The almighty dollar obviously isn’t the only thing at work in their decision process.

But it’s OK for the .gov to force business to make cakes for gay people? Or serve women? Or pick your “oppressed group” it’s OK for businesses to ban guns that are otherwise open to the public? As not a private event, invite only thing?

That bakery wasn’t a government entity, and were forced to have secular service, in violation of their beliefs. Regardless.

Why does YouTube get a pass? Why doesn’t the government force them to respect free speech? And offer the same deal they would offer a cooking shoe or cat channel?

It’s not just guns videos, it’s all kinds of alternative content, anti-sjw videos, anti Islam videos,trump videos, they are all being attacked.

It’s application of a double standard, even by POTG who think it’s ok. And it’s not.

NineShooter, you’re spot on, but the scary thing is the market doesn’t currently care for liberty. Look at all the commercial enterprises that are bullied into doing X politically correct feel good thing. We have seen a bit of a rebound with the safe space university thing though so perhaps reason has hope.

Stuart K, the biggest downside to allowing the market to correct the problem is time. It usually takes a long time for the problem to manifest itself, time for people to decide they don’t like the current situation, time for another team to identify a market need and fill it, and time for the market to find out about and move to the new offering.

Look at Mizzou (University of Missouri) right now. After the SJW-driven problems there last year, admissions are down around 25%, and it’s having a serious effect on the budget. It will take even more time to find out if the administration has actually learned their lesson, or if another few years of tanking admissions and budgets will be required to show them (or their employers) the error of their ways.

Your point about Liberty truly is a scary one, because by the time you realize you actually HAVE a problem in that area, it may be almost too late to solve it (without huge amounts of bloodshed, anyway). We just have to continue to make the point that there is a reason that a lot of this stuff was set up a certain way, and no, the most recent crop of Johnnie-come-latelies isn’t smarter than the old white guys that set it up in the first place.

Same thing for the businesses; we need to make the point that boycotts by people who aren’t their customers isn’t really a boycott.

“Which they have every right to do since they are not, and never have been, a government entity.”

You are wrong.

Freedom of speech is a moral issue, not a legal one. The argument you are making about .gov vs private entity only has to do with the legalities as proposed by the First Amendment.

1A forbids government from abridging Freedom of Speech. But private entities, and in particular those that sell/offer their services on the very premise of giving a speech platform to the public, have every moral obligation to uphold “Freedom of Speech” as every other citizen.

“controversial or sensitive subject and event, including subject related to war, political conflicts, natural disasters and tragedies, even if graphic imagery is not shown.”

Really??? What does that leave – cooking videos and cat videos?

That’s about as brilliant of a business move as the CEO of HP summarily announcing that HP is getting out of the PC business. “oops, I didn’t mean that”. HP never recovered. Pretty tempting to do a full boycott and let them get a nice stiff dose of reality – see if they change their tune. There’s always another site waiting in wings to take over dominance of the market, be it Full 30 or something else.

YouTube is about to go the way of political dissidents, courtesy of 中国, no thank you gov’t a-holes giving away U.S. Sovereignty at every turn.

As soon as China f’s up “the Internet” and its freedoms, and access to it, I’m going to petition Congress to nuke China from orbit (if they don’t comply then it’s on them) then we can build something better than the Internet (with half of the bs cryptolocker crap).

AND NO YOUTUBE. (Because, if we’re going to “anything goes” we’re going to do my version, and you better be grateful that you got this much notice and explanation).

I used to love google. Their site was simple, non-glamorous, and efficient. Then they started censoring search results, took over YouTube and everything went downhill from there. The elimination of controversial topics is the SJW platform of liberal extremists. By doing such, they have made a political statement. And everyday I wish there was a better to-go-to site for user videos.

They want to lose viewers. Youtube never made Google a profit, but they can’t shut it down because it’s too popular. It’s very clear Google’s approach to Youtube has long been “how do we make it unpopular enough so it can be shut down safely” not “how do we make it profitable”.

Why don’t they simply allow for categorization of content on Google (like now), and allow advertisers to select what kind of videos they sponsor (like now). Do they think that somehow pulling money from gun video providers is going to lead them to start making videos about kittens, and shift their viewers as well? What does controversial or sensitive even mean? Why doesn’t Google put their money where their mouths are and refuse controversial advertising, like advertising from either political party, any lobbying group, alcohol and any GMO/non-organic food grown anywhere other than approved growing locations, advertisements from media groups that offer anything other than G-rated music and video products/movies, etc? Well, I guess we can see why they wouldn’t cut off 99% of their advertisers then…

Oh well, I’m sure it will be great to watch a 90 second bourne identity ad where he murders 5-6 people before watching the next kitten playtime video. But those kittens better not have come from any pet stores/puppy farms, only kittens adopted from the humane society/spca are allowed to receive advertising dollars.

They are not “banning” gun vids, they are just not going to “monetize” (i.e. pay producers) who post them. If you post them, they won’t take them down, but if you want to make money at it, go find another place to post, because Google will keep all the advertising revenues.

TTAG should start their own YouTube alternative. With basically no rules. User Personal responsibility required.

Call it: Non-PcTube

If you don’t like it – don’t watch it. Kind of like the rules that existed prior to the liberal rights hating extremist known as the “social justice warrior” looking to make the world less offensive by eliminating ideas.

Context should have been warning enough. Sorry if you got busted but you see my point. With all the crap on YouTube, I hope they at least treat firearms channels the same as these porn videos in disguise as “educational”.

Who cares? If you develop a following on YT, you should try to migrate that traffic to your own real website. Instead, everybody’s taking the traffic they build up on their own sites, then encourage everyone to go to their YT or FB sites.

This doesn’t stop at gun related videos, it goes to nearly every video that’s not a kitten sleeping. If you make videos that have any foul language, that gets de-monetized. If you have a video that is an opinion that is not popular, that gets de-monetized. If you make a video that shows Mario jumping on Bowser, that could be construed as endorsing violence against turtles and it will get de-monetized.

This is youtube killing itself and because no one bothered to embrace an alternative years and years ago, youtube had no competition and set the rules. There was a time Myspace was considered impossible to ever become irrelevant… then it happened. There was a time no one thought Hulk Hogan could body slam Andre the Giant… then it happened. There was a time no one thought planes could be hijacked and flown into skyscrapers, but it happened.

It’s the normalcy bias at work and what’s normal today can quickly disappear.

There is absolutely no doubt that a company making laundry detergent doesn’t want their ads placed in a YouTube video about (choose your offensive subject matter). I’d feel the same way.

However, Google has a well-known and very strong left wing corporate culture, and many elements within it would love to see a complete removal of guns, and gun owners, from our society, by any means necessary. The potential for censorship of gun videos is very real, and IMO, quite likely.

First demonetize them, then ban them all together. Google, one of the two or three largest corporations in the world, can easily afford the trivial loss of revenue.

Still, I believe there will be other video engines if they do. I use the example of Gunbroker as a successful alternative to an otherwise dominant force, that being Ebay.

The dirtiest part of this is that the “demonetizing” doensn’t mean they won’t play ads over your content, just that they won’t pay you for doing so if you are deamed “advertiser- unfriendly”. The veil is thin on the intent here, and it not just gun videos – its any subject, usually conservative in nature, that youtube/google doesn’t like.

Well, this YouTube foolishness is either “death by MBA”, “death by entitled snowflake” or both. It’s the same problem as Google+ … Google’s offer is finding stuff from all over the cyber-world; finding stuff that appeals to Googlers is a much smaller market.

Google made their money by providing a better “what I need” location tool, for the vast flea market that is the Interwebz. They could do this because, fundamentally, the intertubes is based on open standards. Even their ads started out as better, highly calibrated “what I need, but didn’t know enough to ask for that other way” information.

The MBAs show up declaring: “Remove the low-margin stuff, and we’ll make massive margins on the remainder. Better!”

The Snowflakes show up declaring: “This is my sandbox, and there shouldn’t be anything I find icky in it. I’m a googler.(!) I’m special. We’re changing the interwebs.(!)”

Both get all excited about bleeding off stuff that just doesn’t fit their world. However, on top of “there’s only so much market” for high-margin stuff, or snowflake-compatible stuff, neither of them seems to get that *universality is a big part of the value*, and *total volume* a big part of determining success. (The search engine wars weren’t that long ago. You’d think somebody would remember.)

This applies to “google” over all, and to search results, which they are polluting by “tweaking” (or Facebook by “curating” their feed), and to The Goog-Tube. It’s valuable because everything is there.

If they had a clue, they’d construct a viable “channels & presence* toolkit bundling several of their techs, but *resolving to distinct URIs, storefronts, and communities.* BUT, that’s the integration business, the B to B business, and the enterprise product business. Way harder than what they are used to.

Besides, the culture doesn’t fit. The people in the company aren’t sure of much, but they are sure they are so much smarter than everybody else that they can just do whatever the want, and the rest of us will follow along. And that implementation stuff is for the little peole.

Doomed.

As long as there is *any* streaming video format they don’t own (there are at least 3), and *any* mechanism for ad-hoc communities to find each other and colt (as many as there need be – darknet anyone?) narrowing their market is a doomed strategy.

It’s ironic because they got the tremendous traction early on, exactly by being as broad as possible.